About

Matthew R. K. Haynes is a State of Idaho Writing Fellow, Lambda Literary Fiction Writing Fellow, Lambda Literary Fiction Writer-in-Residence, 50th Year Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Writing Fellow, and Moulin e Nef France Fellow.  He earned his M.A. in Fiction and M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Boise State University.  His work has appeared in several anthologies and journals including West Branch, The Los Angeles Review, The Normal School, Hawaii Pacific Review, O’iwi, Native Literatures, Yellow Medicine Review, and The Florida Review.  He has been a finalist for the The Iowa Review Award, Faulkner Award in Fiction, Writer’s Digest Award in Nonfiction, Glimmer Train Award for Short Short Fiction, Tennessee Williams award in Fiction, Tobias Wolff award in fiction, and The Florida Review Editor’s Prize in Fiction.  He was runner-up for the ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award and a semifinalist for the ScreenCraft Cinematic Novel Competition.  His work has been considered for adaptation into film by Netflix producer 21 Laps Entertainment.  His novella, Friday, was released from Anaphora Literary Press in 2015.

Matthew is working to place his completed novel and short story collection.

His novel, Where We Go From Here, is set in Butte, Montana, 1986.  A father dies of exposure one winter evening, drunk in the mountains.  One year and a half later, while his surviving wife and two sons navigate the fallout of his absence, the brothers find a letter to their father, left in his tackle box: “Charlie, not now, not ever  —L”.  So begins their search for —L, whom they believe is the other woman who has ruined their lives.  Told in first person, past tense, from the younger brother, Squeak’s, point of view, Where We Go From Here wrestles with the pain of growing up feeling lost in an old, mining town, the complexities of coming to understand his closeted, gay brother and despondent mother, and the revelations of a father who he had never really known.

Blue Hawai’i or E ha’awi ia makou I ka makou makemake (Give Us What We Want), is a linked short story collection of which all stories take place in Hawai’i.

There are 11 stories in the collection, and each story is linked by one character.  A few of the stories included are:

“These are Private Joys” in which a woman travels to Hilo from the east coast mainland after being diagnosed with cancer, finds a lover, and creates a space for herself to be free of her home life, even if only for a short while.  (Finalist/Honorable Mention for the GlimmerTrain Short Short Story Award)

“What Covers the House is a Roof” in which an obese gay, Hawaiian man dreams of finding someone who can love him beyond his looks, but is called home to Maui to tend to his mother who is dying of rabies. (Published in The Los Angeles Review and runner-up for the Cinematic Short Story Award)

“We Can’t Undo a Thing” in which a local highway police officer who is heartbroken and tired of driving the beat on the road to Hana encounters an old man who is suffering from heartache as well, though of a different kind, and the officer makes a life or death decision.

Matthew lives in his hometown of Butte, Montana.